Video from Houston: How to survive a shooting

This undated image provided Aug. 1, 2012, by the City of Houston shows a scene from a video the city of Houston made to teach people how to react in the case of an active shooting situation using a short, three-word mantra. Run, hide, fight. The short, 5 minute 55 second clip was released by the city days after an attack in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater killed 12 people. (AP Photo/The City of Houston)

A scene from a video the city of Houston made teaches people how to react in the case of an active shooting situation using a short, three-word mantra: run, hide, fight. The nearly 6-minute clip was released by the city days after an attack in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater killed 12 people.

A scene from a video the city of Houston made teaches people how to react in the case of an active shooting situation using a short, three-word mantra: run, hide, fight. The nearly 6-minute clip was released by the city days after an attack in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater killed 12 people.

A scene from a video the city of Houston made teaches people how to react in the case of an active shooting situation using a short, three-word mantra: run, hide, fight. The nearly 6-minute clip was released by the city days after an attack in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater killed 12 people.

An almost six-minute video created by the city of Houston to teach people how to react in a mass shooting has racked up more than 400,000 YouTube views since mid-July and has drawn praise and some criticism from Amarillo law enforcement officials.

Amarillo police spokesman Sgt. Brent Barbee said the video was emailed to him last week by training personnel and the Department of Public Safety.

“My reaction (to the film) was more to the idea than to the film itself,” Barbee said. “It’s just sad that this type of information is useful or called for.”

Officials in the nation’s fourth-largest city posted online the federally funded, $200,000 video public-service announcement just days after last month’s movie-theater killings in Aurora, Colo. It has attracted even more attention after six people were killed Sunday in a shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in what federal authorities described as an act of domestic terrorism.

Kevin Starbuck, emergency management coordinator for Amarillo and Potter and Randall counties, said, in light of online buzz created by the recent shootings, he’s not surprised the city of Houston would make the video.

The Houston video, called “Run. Hide. Fight. Surviving an active shooter event” starts with ominous music and a man in black walking toward an office building. “It may feel like just another day at the office,” the narrator’s voice says, “but occasionally, life feels more like an action movie than reality.”

The video cuts back and forth from images of the man in black entering the office building to scenes of people talking and laughing at their desks and in the breakroom. Statistics of situations where people are killed — eating at restaurants, in class, at a shopping center — flash up on the screen.

“Unfortunately you need to be prepared for the worst,” the narrator says before the man in black enters the lobby, pulls a gun from his bag, shoots a security guard and opens fire on other people in the room.

The video lists the safety options in order from best to worst — run, hide, fight — in a style that evokes the “stop, drop and roll” fire-safety drill taught to children.

“The safest thing is to get as far away from that situation as you can,” said Amarillo police Cpl. Jerry Neufeld.

For hide, the video instructs people to try to lock or blockade any entrances and to do their best to remain quiet and calm. For the fight section, it says to act with aggression and improvise weapons.

“It’s kind of a fight-or-flight scenario,” Neufeld said.

“If you’re faced with that, the things that you wouldn’t think of as a weapon become weapons.”

Some have criticized the video for neglecting to discuss firearms as a method of self-defense.

Danny Davis, director of the homeland-security graduate program at Texas A&M University in College Station, told the Wall Street Journal that Houston officials were remiss for sidestepping the issue.

Barbee said he appreciated that the video stressed first responders are not there to evacuate or attend to the wounded.

“The first officers are there to neutralize the threat,” Barbee said.

Neufeld and Barbee thought the video was helpful and provided good information, although they stressed the likelihood of someone being caught in a random shooting situation is rare.